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What Is Bioavailability?
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Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. This content should not be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any medical condition or health issue. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition.
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We talk a lot about how BEAM Minerals are close to 100% bioavailable. But what does that actually mean?
Here’s a quick guide to bioavailability and why it matters for supplements.
What Is Bioavailability?
Bioavailability is how much of a supplement you actually absorb.
Let’s say you take magnesium citrate every morning. The bottle says each pill contains 200 mg of magnesium , but in reality, you don’t absorb all of it. Maybe only 100 mg of magnesium actually makes it to your cells.
In that case, your magnesium supplement has 50% bioavailability —for every 200 mg you take, your body absorbs 100 mg.
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What Affects Bioavailability?
A lot of factors determine how well you absorb a supplement.
Before they reach your cells, supplements have to make it through your stomach, digestive tract, bloodstream, and liver—and as they move along that path there are a lot of things that can stop them. For example:
Some substances are destroyed by stomach acid.
Some substances are too big or awkwardly shaped to make it through the lining of your digestive tract and into your bloodstream.
Some substances have low solubility—they don’t dissolve well in water, which makes it difficult for them to travel through your bloodstream.
Some substances get flagged by your liver, identified as dangerous, and destroyed by liver enzymes. This is especially common when it comes to drugs—your liver is like a security checkpoint that protects the rest of your body from things it considers harmful.
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And, even if they survive all that, some substances can’t pass the membrane that surrounds your cells, or the barrier that protects your brain, or any number of other protective linings that are meant to keep your body safe from foreign compounds.
In reality, your body is not a perfect system. If you eat something, some portion of it will probably make it through all those gates and reach your cells. There aren’t many supplements with 0% bioavailability.
But if you take a supplement in a form that can’t pass all those checkpoints, the bioavailability will be low.
If we continue with the magnesium citrate example from before: a 2014 review found that magnesium citrate has about 34% bioavailability . [ * ] That may not sound good, but citrate was actually the most bioavailable form of all the common magnesium supplements. Some others, like magnesium oxide, had as low as 6% bioavailability.
You need about 400 mg of magnesium a day. If you take a 400 mg magnesium oxide pill, you may think you’ve got your bases covered—but in reality, you’d only be absorbing about 24 mg of magnesium from your supplement. That’s like eating a couple bites of spinach.
The form of supplement you take matters a lot . Not all supplements are created equal. You need something your body can actually absorb, regardless of the amount listed on the label.
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What Makes BEAM Minerals So Bioavailable?
At BEAM, we derive all our minerals from a compound called humate, found in deep soil.
Humate contains every essential mineral the human body needs, which makes it great as a mineral supplement. But it also contains compounds called humic and fulvic , which are the secret to BEAM’s almost-perfect bioavailability.
Humic and fulvic are unusual substances. They’re flexible, resilient molecules that can pass through your body and reach your cells with ease. They also have lots of binding sites on their exterior, which act like little arms that can grab onto minerals and take them along for the ride.
When humic and fulvic come into contact with minerals, they bind together to form a super-absorbable complex. That complex carries the minerals through your body and into your cells at rapid speed, with almost no resistance from your body.
In other words, humic and fulvic cause a huge increase in bioavailability . They’re like taxis that drive minerals straight to your cells and drop them off, without getting into any crashes or hitting traffic along the way.
A comprehensive 2015 study looked at how humic and fulvic affect the absorption of different minerals. [ * ] The authors found that humic and fulvic increased:
Calcium absorption by 104%
Magnesium absorption by 74%
Zinc absorption by 350% .
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Iron absorption by 264%.
That’s what sets BEAM Minerals apart from other supplements. Thanks to humic and fulvic, our minerals come in a super-bioavailable form—and because BEAM contains every essential mineral, you can refill all your mineral stores at once, in about 30 seconds a day.
So if you want to be sure your mineral supplements actually work, switch to BEAM Minerals . We make things easy for you. Give us a try today!
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FAQs
Can I take BEAM Minerals with my other supplements?
Yes, in fact, BEAM Minerals will enhance the bioavailability of all your other supplements.
What is the difference between Micro-BOOST™ and Electrolyze™?
Electrolyze™ is primarily composed of Fulvic Mineral Complexes . Fulvic complexes are small molecules that provide inter-cellular transport for nutritional elements into the cells and carry bio-waste out of the cells. Fulvic complexes are flavonoids , which provide many benefits in the body.
Micro-BOOST™ is primarily composed of the Humic Mineral Complexes . Humic complexes are large molecules that are extra-cellular, meaning they do not enter the cells but stay outside the cells. They are highly-charged molecules that attract, through their electrical charge, bio-waste, free radicals and heavy metals. They ultimately carry bio-waste out of the body. Thus, we call them “Nature’s Janitor”.
How many milligrams (mg) of an electrolyte (Potassium, Magnesium, Sodium, Calcium, etc.) is there in BEAM Minerals?
The quantities of each element in BEAM Minerals products are measured in “parts per million” (ppm), rather than the “milligrams” (mg). Here is the information which usually helps to understand the difference:
Milligrams (mg) vs parts per million (ppm)
In comparing our products to other supplements, people want to know how much of an electrolyte is in our products (like potassium, magnesium, sodium, calcium). Usually they are looking for an amount in milligrams (mg).
We have a hard time answering that question, because the electrolytes (and other elements) in BEAM Minerals products are measured in parts per million (ppm). So how can consumers compare?
The answer is a little complex, but here’s the high points.
The electrolytes in BEAM Minerals products are provided in “trace” amounts that are completely dissolved and thus 100% bio-available, immediately introduced into your circulation when you consumed them and will produce and active effect.
When you take a 320mg pill of magnesium, your body is only able utilize about 12-20% of it as it takes some time because your body has to digest it first. Whatever is not dissolved gets processed out of your body.
When you take a capful of liquid Electrolyze™ and/or Micro-BOOST™, you receive approximately 5.22 ppm of magnesium in which 100% of the magnesium is immediately available to your body. In addition, an important to know is that the magnesium in BEAM Minerals products stay in your system much longer building up healthy levels as you continue to take it daily.
